[TopQuark]

I knew George Will wasn't exactly a conservative, but this is unbelievable. I'll let you judge whether Will is exactly a conservative, but this is something taken from an a conversation. It sounds to me that he may have omitted the word "also." The sentence "that capitalism is [also] a government program" would seem correct to me if it means, as supported by the context, that the government has to strengthen the institution of capitalism.

Are you blowing up a building because there is a mouse in it?

[tonyinv]

No, he said those words. It struck me as obscene. I agree that government has a regulatory/enforcement roll, but only becuase we as a society deem it so. It's "by the consent of the governed" isn't it? Didn't the principles of capitalism and free markets exist before government?

[BluesDuke]

The sentence "that capitalism is [also] a government program" would seem correct to me if it means, as supported by the context, that the government has to strengthen the institution of capitalism.

Which isn't exactly an alien thought of George Will's; he made much the same argument in his 1983 book, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does. Indeed, he has argued over much of his career that among government's legitimate business is not merely strengthening capitalism but addressing and regulating the things capitalism would effect, so far as customers' preferences and the like are concerned. His is more of a kind of 18th or early 19th century Toryism. I frankly prefer him as what he once said was his prime ambition: I hope to reverse Mr. (James) Reston's course. I want to be a baseball writer when I grow up.